Dear Deadpool: Letters From Accross The Fourth Wall
by Mary Sanctum Treetops
Summary: Abigail Tryst is a demure 19 year-old who never read a comic. She falls in love at the movies and then attempts to convince her man to go out with her on a date. In the meantime she endeavors to learn everything she can about him through his comics. Narrated in the (meta) first person in the form of letters, here are her unfiltered thoughts, feelings and dreams as shared with him.
1. Hustling Life

Dear Deadpool,

I love you and I want to marry you. I know you are with Vanessa in the movie but you are not married yet and just in case things don't work out, you should know that I have gone completely bananas for you. You may be wondering why I am not worried about Vanessa reading this. Well, _I am._ In fact she probably _won't_ read this because she's trapped in your movie... that's something I am just going to have to live with. Whatever the case may be, we should keep in mind that if the two of you are somehow not meant to be together, then everyone will be happier in the scenario I suggest, whereas if you _are_ meant to be together, then we will still all be happier in the world that follows from _that_ outcome. So, in the end, my quest is just going to be a type of reinforcement of what ought to be, whatever that may be. Besides, as you know, it's just a movie, and Vanessa is a character, therefore she may very well be thought to stand for whatever it is that you truly want and maybe I could be that person for you.

One of the reasons why I am a better choice is because, like you, I am meta. I come from beyond the fourth wall. There is a potential understanding between us that Vanessa could never partake in. If there's anyone I should be competing with though, it's death. I hear she loves you and/or you love her (I'll have to read your story to find out), she tangles with your heart in transcendental ways. She too is meta, like me, but we display one important difference: while she is menacing death, I am hustling life.

Before I go on any further, I should tell you that I am not really Abigail Tryst, nor am I Mary Sanctum Treetops... (How's that for meta!... I told you I was meta.) I invented those pen names because I was having a problem satisfying the _Fiction_ requirement of _Fan Fiction_. I am simply me. Telling you this, however, does not ruin any of the necessary framework for my letters since we may very well imagine that Abigail Tryst is telling us these things in order to protect her own identity and, in the end, we just don't know and it all aligns very well with the genre.

I have to get my hands on your comics because I want to learn everything I can about you. So far I have been trying to keep up with whatever snippets are in the news and in the marketing of your movie and I am enjoying every morsel of it. I fall asleep every night listening to your movie soundtrack.

Good night,

Abigail Tryst.

P.S. I wrote this two days before publication\\(letter) sending and just now is a newsflash update: my first Deadpool comic has arrived! It's "Dead Presidents" by Brian Posehn, Gerry Duggan and Tony Moore . You might think that is an odd place to start reading in the continuity of things but it was by a technical accident that I ordered this one first. My accident seems now, however, to be in perfect timing with the upcoming American presidential elections and I can't wait to delve into it because, at a quick glance, it looks singularly great...


	2. About That Article in The New Yorker

Dear Deadpool,

The first time I saw you, you were upside down in a barrel-rolling minivan asking yourself if you had left the stove on. That promotional poster was right in front of where I always sat in the subway. All I had to do was look up and there you were. Upon first seeing you I thought to myself: "Deadpool... What an awful name. I wonder what they'll come up with next?" I didn't know anything about you at the time, or about your story.

Recently my poster disappeared. This morning I walked all over the subway station looking for it- as if they would have just moved it over or it would have displaced itself by itself a hundred feet down, like that makes any sense -and, of course, it was nowhere to be found. It simply vanished while all of the other posters for the other movies are still there. I am really upset about it because I miss you looking straight at me after work. Maybe someone is trying to separate us...

Or...maybe your poster disappeared because those who control the media figured out that the phrase "with great power comes great irresponsibility" slipped past them and was your idea of a whimsical poke at Corporate Social Irresponsibility, at the dark going-ons at the Hospice, Ajax and the likes of him... Was it? People who's mouths can't be controlled are either hurt by the media or don't appear in them at all. Maybe that's why your poster is gone. When The Twilight Saga was all the rage, the characters were on magazine covers for years... You're a cash cow. Where are _you_ darling? (You're afraid of cows.) This is what it means to be an antihero: you're of the kind that bosses don't like because you are your own boss. Those role models called "heroes" come in tight packages, like hamster asses. No one tells me who to love. I miss you.

There are a few very important things I ought to hurry and talk about right away. As a matter of necessity, I need to address the nature of fourth wall breaks, an important topic for us because these are the portal through which our minds meet and they need to be defined so that we can control the portal. It's not science, we're not walking through wormholes. It's the relationship between art and the public, between you and I.

But before I softly pillow-talk you through my opinion on fourth wall breaks, there is a higher priority emergency that needs to be addressed and that is the article about you recently published in The New Yorker. I want to talk about it before it gets old. Did you read it? It's entitled _The "Deadpool" Phenomenon and the American Male,_ it's by Richard Brody and it's online. First off, can I tell you how much I hate the fact that they put your name in quotation marks, as if you weren't real... and hold on to your chimichangas because that's just the beginning.

The article is underhandedly deprecating. (The effect it's going for is "deprecating while looking like it doesn't want to be"...in other words it's just that the movie is bad even if the author is nice.) It starts off by saying your movie is not as fun to watch as your fans are, though "not a terrible experience"... That sets the tone for the entire article so if you stop reading here you're not missing anything. But if you read on, the author proceeds to deliver to us culture and refinement... meanwhile, if _we_ are cultured, which readers of The New Yorker are _eager_ to be, we too will know better than to engage with the content of your movie, shifting instead our attention to more important matters like how coarse, childish and dumb your fans are or how technically polished the movie is. People should do absolutely _anything_ but listen to what _you_ have to say- that it's Christmas and that you're getting someone on your naughty list...

As you know, I have listened to you and where _belief_ is concerned I have fallen deep...deeeeep... into the rabbit hole and I intend to stay there where the air is clear (dear?) and where you are near. My evening at your movie suggests otherwise than this article would have us think. People loved you, they followed you and what you were saying and they were engaged. Did you see them? Did you see their faces? Hear their candid, almost childish, laughter? It was a full house. When I arrived, there was no room left to sit down so I had to be in the second row, close up against the screen where your puns seem even _punnier_. The house cheered and laughed and everyone loved you. I had never seen anything like it and that was when and I fell in love with you. It was your confidence that got me.

The next thing in the article: your movie is praised on technical things to promote and teach aristocratic sensibilities as the proper way to appreciate art. It tells us in turn that what _really_ matters to a good art critic is, first, to mock people with ideals just like in high school, second, to let your superior insights reject the naivete of _believing_ , and finally, to notice, for those who are connoisseurs of the rating system, that your movie is not really rated R. Sometimes the author uses another kind of disengagement stratagem: direct contradiction, calling you "contrived" when your main personality trait is actually to say everything that goes through your mind without filters, sort of like me. This completes my analysis of paragraph one of the article. I know you can handle this because I noticed on hashtag Deadpool that you were reading Judy Bloom, so you do read...

The author makes sure to point out that the antihero is not only ridiculous but also patriotic, just to make sure we are all being _patriotic_ while being deprecating. There's nothing especially patriotic about you, is there? I mean, you don't _flash_ the fact that you're Canadian, not that I've noticed in the movie anyhow... (I have yet to read your comics, I just wanted to deal with this article first.) Then, he makes sure to tell us that it's boyish not to follow rules when the capacity for rule breaking- not needing to be told what to do, having independent thoughts, making deliberate choices and acting in full awareness of consequences -is actually the hallmark of adulthood. What does he think it means _to be an adult_? To walk in a straight line? To be a non-faulty product?

The next thing that happens in the article is a plot summary (without a spoiler alert) so that you don't have to go see the movie. Then, the author proceeds to discredit cast and crew while looking generous about it and suggesting that the proper way to interpret this movie is this: its main story line is extremely conservative, like Hollywood classics, reminding us that there is nothing new under the sun because if you go all the way around to the left, you end up in the extreme right... right where you should be. In that same train of thought the great accomplishment of hip-hop was to make it manly to use _big words-_ irrespective of what those big words mean in accordance with the aristocratic flair promoted -and _not_ to make it dangerous to be manly.

The author then reminds us one more time, on account of the final scene, that there is nothing to look at in this movie aside from technical details... But obviously there is something gut wrenching about the way you love, or else I wouldn't be here writing you. I want you to know that I love you no matter what your face looks like. In finishing, we are told that your movie is coarse in the worst kind of way and pure in the worst kind of way and- for those to whom the idea of a low(er) budget film appealed -that it's like a big budget film in the worst kind of way, but without the budget. It is only after applying itself so surgically for many paragraphs at taking the dis out of disaffected that this article finally calls your movie "innocuous" and then concludes, almost scientifically, that there is something wrong with it.

How's that for engineering the thoughts of the finest wannabe cultivated people? That's what I think, Deadpool. Now that I am done with this, I can start reading your comics.

Maybe you disagree with me on some level but any good relationship starts with honesty, right? Sometimes I can be dramatic but the problem is that I miss your poster and I hope they're going to put it back.

I was really touched by what you said about the potpourri in the Dear Deadpool sequence. Your sensitive side is one that reaches me deeply.

These are my thoughts. Love,

Abigail Tryst


	3. The Erotic Statement of a Man's Chest

Dear Deadpool,

This morning I had a daydream about being on a bus while the song _Summer of 69_ by Bryan Adams was playing. I think maybe I was on that bus to go visit you and the song told the bus driver where to go. It was a bright sunny day and I sat there beside the driver while the music blared those signature arpeggios that are unmistakably attributed to that song. Upon awaking from my glorious daze I realized that I have to research that song as it perhaps contains a clue as to where and how you and I could meet. On first thought I would think that "your momma's porch" is where the song says we have to meet... but in my daydream I never reached my destination. Finally, I realized that the places described in the song are located 1969 and that the bus had neither plutonium nor compost.

I would like to make love to you one day. I have a little bit of experience that way. I would make love to someone who is really the man in the relationship, and who really needs me to. By the way, Ryan Reynolds has the best ass ever, especially in that close up shot about fitting it into spandex, don't you think? It's nice and full and manly. I like it. It's not like one of those tiny asses you see on bodybuilders, the kind that looks like a hamster's ass.

Speaking of body parts, I have an issue with the worn out phrase (or phrases similar to) "inexplicably taking his top off" mindlessly used to describe men in movies designed to please the female viewer. The ready-to-go phrase is so ready that it is even used when it isn't applicable. I am referring to the comment left by Danny Mueller, the graduate research assistant at Utah State University, on a viral letter by Nina Williams entitled _Deadpool film is sick-minded, perverted,_ in an online publication called the Windsor Star. I also noticed others using the idiom while talking about your movie, some chick on YouTube, notably, who's video I have lost track of. To be certain, I _like_ both of these people, I mean, what they had to say, so it's a comment on that particular issue that I am making. I think people should take it easy on these imaginary women who need these omnipresent inexplicable males to remove their inexplicable tops. I know I would be repulsed by a man who inexplicably had his top off. I can't stand having things rubbed in my face like that. Besides, your chest always exists, even when it's under your shirt, and even if it wasn't ripped in addition to being under your shirt it would still exist and that's what matters to me. I don't need to _see_ it, much less to _inexplicably_ see it... especially not on a first date, and that movie was our first date. I mean, if an explosion ripped your top off, then I wouldn't mind because it's not like you tried to rub it in.

It certainly isn't true in your movie that your top is _inexplicably_ off... When does the anti-hero _inexplicably_ take his top off in your movie? After a second viewing, it is sort of inexplicably off in the fight scene with Ajax after you escape the lab, but your chest is so mangled that there's nothing to see and it doesn't fit the trope. There's that moment just before you faint where you take your top off, but the fainting part ruins the effect. For the full effect Mr Mueller is discussing, YOU're supposed to have your top off and SOMEONE ELSE is supposed to faint (preferably a female and preferably in your arms) and, in addition to that, you are supposed to have absolutely no valid explanation as to why your top is off and in that segment you were apparently about to make love, therefore it doesn't satisfy the _inexplicability_ requirement either.

Most of the time in the movie you are covered head to toe in your antihero Deadpool costume. It's more like your _face_ is inexplicably _covered_ all the time, inexplicably, that is, to those characters who are not familiar with your condition or with (anti)hero stuff. Don't the people who use these kinds of phrases without thinking also make love without a top? Or do they always inexplicably have a top on when they do it? And when they are getting tortured in shady organizations running unethical experiments on human beings, don't they also understandably often have no top on? In some of the love scenes you are even wearing one of those ugly Christmas sweaters nobody wants that somehow always come from aunties who don't understand you. Mr. Mueller's comment definitely does not apply to you. No. It's your _ass_ that is inexplicably bare during that legendary ring-pop proposal... of all moments to choose to be without underwear. I think people should be more observing instead of repeating ready made sentences because I don't like having inexplicably topless men thrown at me. I don't like it, Deadpool.

Love she who among all your loves will have the last word,

Abigail Tryst


	4. The Portal Through Which We Meet

Dear Deadpool,

Lets imagine us for a moment lying face to face in, our heads resting firmly on the same pillow, our noses almost touching... It's about time I tried to explain to you what I think the portal through which we meet is. It isn't easy to describe what others call "fourth wall breaking," but I'll give it my best shot. This way, you and I will always know how to find each-other no matter what happens.

I dislike the expression "breaking the fourth wall." It sounds like the characters are trapped in a box that they break free from by trespassing one of the walls. It's actually the audience that is in a box where one of the walls breaks open onto a different world. The definition that invariably follows that expression, particularly in the mouth of Ryan Reynolds when he is interviewed on the topic, is that "the character is conscious that he is in a movie," but there's something wrong with that definition. It _reinforces_ the fiction and here's how: a fictional character who is aware that he is a fictional character is a fiction... Therefore accepting that definition walls us in with the characters into an even greater fiction that becomes our reality. No. I reject that definition and I reject the expression "breaking the fourth wall" too because I find it inaccurate.

Having rejected these I asked myself what that thing they call a "fourth wall break" really is and to do that I started thinking about artistic works I am aware of that have it. Here I must explain the limitations of my knowledge. I don't know a lot of things but I try to to turn my ignorance to my advantage as it allows me to have a fresh take on things. If there are things that I should know and don't, I will count on my readers to help me out with them. So it goes that I don't know a lot of art but I only need a few snippets of knowledge to figure this one out

First off, I assume that what we normally call "fourth wall breaks" is something that has existed for a very long time, perhaps thousands of years. It is, most likely, as old as theatre itself. I remember that in _The Phantom of the Opera,_ there is a play inside the movie and the play is entitled _Il Muto_ and in the play the characters address the audience directly, sharing with the audience their innermost thoughts. The story of the play seems to be about an aristocratic couple where both members of the couple are cheating on each-other without knowing that the other is cheating on them. Both share their perspectives with the audience but not with each-other. The audience, therefore, is given a God's eye view, knowing the inner perspective of _both_ characters while regular first-person narration can only ever give the perspective of one character. Seeing this, I then ask myself what this is and I have decided to give it my own definition: _complicity with the audience_. Art that is complicit with the public is art that addresses issues that are of personal significance to the public, issues that reach people, that mean something to them. In the case of _Il Muto_ , it is the decadence of the aristocracy, exposing the underside of what looks good on the surface.

I remember that in Aristophanes's _Clouds_ , written and performed thousands of years ago, the chorus comments on everything that happens in the play and that commentary is also complicity with the audience. Providing the audience with a running commentary means that the audience exists. Complicity with the audience: that is both the definition and the name of the thing that is being defined and it is the portal through which we meet. You and I are both meta characters within our own stories. If you are complicit with your audience and I am complicit with mine, and if we can get them engaged enough, we might just open up that portal and finally meet. Of course I have a lot of catching up to do.

It was nice imaginary pillow talking with you, of course I did all the talking...

Yours forever,

Abigail Tryst

P.S. Do you think all of this sort of makes me a superhero like you?


	5. Undoing the Damage that Was Done to Us

Dear Deadpool,

After I had my daydream, I thought perhaps I should listen to the song that was in my daydream, _Summer of 69_ by Bryan Adams. I put my headphones on and watched the music video and to my great astonishment, I saw _you_ in it. The author poured his soul into this song and, because the human story is the same for everyone, if anyone looks closely enough they can find a little bit of themselves in another's art _._

When people look at the clouds and see in their shapes a bunny, a cow or a dog chasing a ball, these are legitimate perceptions because no one can tell you that you're wrong. None of these perceptions are correct though. The only correct answer is that when looking at a cloud you see a cloud. Watching a music video is different. In this one what's appropriate is to reminisce about the band you were in and about the good old days. I am feeling the good old days near to my heart like an inner fire that I must pursue. I ardently desire to return to that epic place of teenage hopes and freedom with you and to turn back the clock on the damage that the world has done to us. However I was never in a band and, in addition to that, when I see _you_ in the song I am seeing something unexpected and different... but not inappropriate and here's why.

It is my belief that the artist's explicit intention in the video is to give us permission to interpret things differently. The way he expresses this intention is by showing us with pictures that the words of the song mean something very different than we might think. For example while the words suggest that he was working hard at his job, the images show that he was _sleeping_ on the job and while the lyrics as a whole may suggest that he was being promiscuous instead of settling down ("You told me that you'd wait forever" "I knew that it was now or never" "We were killing time, We were young and restless, We needed to unwind, I guess nothin' can last forever") the images show that he was horsing around throwing tomatoes and was perhaps too shy to say yes to the girl. We can't know the correct interpretation of things without knowing the times and the heart and _that_ gives me permission to see you in the video just a little bit more than I have permission to see you in the clouds. Who knows? Maybe you and I really did meet "on your mama's porch" in 1969... Anything seems possible in that magical year of innocence.

I have to learn everything I can about the year 1969. It's somehow relevant to us. Why else would Bryan Adams be singing about it with such insistence, and why else would Jackson Browne be singing about it in his song entitled _Running On Empty_ in which he says "In '69 I was 21?" Lesser known french singer Francine Raymond sings " _En '69 j'avais 13 ans_ " (In '69 I was 13). Why does everybody insist on telling us how old they were in 1969? I have to find out, Deadpool, what the f**k happened in 1969?

There is no explicit reference to you in the song. That wouldn't be possible since _Summer of 69_ was released on the album _Reckless_ in 1984 while you were created around 1991 and our story is just happening right now as I write. In referencing, there is a simple law: time. Things that are being referenced always happen before the thing that refers to them.

In the video, I see myself getting you out of your job at the movie theatre and I take you by the hand and off we go together, elated and free. We run off to the lake and there you are standing in front of me in your red and black garb and we smile at each-other and... and... we are so close to bliss, I nearly had a closer on that day! Then, suddenly, an artificial dawn hits you like a pair of headlights and you turn your back on me, abandoning me there in 1969. All of it is eerily reminiscent of the 1998 movie _The Truman Show_ but that's not possible since that movie was produced 14 years later. On the other hand it is theoretically possible that _The Truman Show_ is referencing the sequence of images in this Bryan Adams' video.

Earlier in the video, we see rubble falling to the ground, signifying abandoned dreams of being in a band but when it falls, it does in the shape of an X, marking the spot where we meet. Then we see some weeping willows (W.W. - like Wade Wilson). Towards the end, you're walking along some paneling that has large numbers on it and looks like the one in the final scene of your movie except the numbers are different, ascending, perhaps to signify the passage of time. One, two, three... they read as you walk past them.

I started reading _Dead Presidents_. I only read four pages. In it, a zombie president Truman is called back from the dead and Captain America isn't handling it very well so orders are given to discreetly stop that public relations mess from happening. The commander on board the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier points angrily to a headline that reads " _Cap Snaps in_ _Scrap_ " and subtitled " _Decapitain America Stars in Truman Show_ "...

It suddenly occurred to me that there might be other things, aside from the 1998 movie, that are also called The Truman Show... maybe something to do with president Truman? Get this Deadpool: there's nothing... only a psychiatric disease called the Truman Show Syndrome... but it was coined in 2008, ten years after the film, and this new disease actually got its name from the movie and concerns delusions of persecution and grandeur, and, as if to cast doubt on the necessity of having this extra disease, it's not accepted in the DSM yet- that's the book of officially recognized mental diseases -says wikipedia. Forgive me for stating the obvious but it appears to me that they have named a type of delusion after the one man they could find to whom the content of patient's delusions was actually happening. Aside from the disease, which came _after_ the show, nothing else in history seems to have been called "Truman Show", other than this quote form _Dead Presidents_ , which was published in 2012, so I guess I can assume as I read on that there is a reference to the movie in this comic. In any case, I clearly have to learn about President Truman and perhaps all the others that will be featured in this comic, and I don't know who's on my list yet since I am only on page four.

Reading on, I found a message from you lodged deep inside the foul talk of your film. When I found it I felt the thrill of anticipation as I realized that I was about to become intimately acquainted with the mind of the man I love. After being showed the headline, the operative goes on explaining to her commander that the assignment he has just given her is "a bag of crap" because if she fails she will get blamed while if she succeeds no one will ever know. This line jumped off the page to me: it's the referent of your many _bag_ comments in your movie: "a bag of ass holes", "a bag of dick tips" and I think there was another bag but I can't remember what it was...

Are you telling us that you are on an assignment promising no personal reward and carrying with it the risk of defamation? Is that your quest? Your grail? A thing so disadvantageous to you yet so important? Are you sacrificing yourself darling? What's going on? What's your _bag_ Deadpool? I am angry and I am writing you through my tears. How am I ever going to find you with a big bag of filthy unknowns like that standing in the way? That explains your obsession with poop... poop this, poop that, poop in someone else's cat litter, dead poopl, skull poopl, shit emoticons...It all transferred beautifully all over your movie and marketing when the shit hit the fan. Just Swell.

The next two things I need to study are the Truman Presidency and the year 1969. I wonder what I am going to discover...

Your beloved forever,

Abigail Tryst


	6. Truman

Dear Deadpool,

Last week I sliced my finger open while twisting the lid of a mason jar that was damaged around the rim. The little cut I bore bled profusely and I thought about you. I watched it healing a little bit each day and I thought about you. I thought about how fast you heal, about all those pictures I saw of you in your books where you return to your original form after incurring mortal damage. I think, in particular, of that time you recovered from that landmark stabbing, after the man who "cannot tell a lie [...] killed [you] with [his] little hatchet"on the cover of the last issue of _Dead Presidents_ where a pirate flag is seen planted through your chest and into the ground. It's like in your movie. Which brings me to wonder if perhaps it's not George Washington I should be studying instead of Harry S. Truman.

Truman was the man who made the decision to launch on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was a Baptist who served in World War I and was involved at various levels of public administration before reaching the seat of President in 1948, as World War II ended. He is known for passing laws for the better treatment of African American veterans, who deserve the same treatment as others. He had a hand in the creation of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the United Nations and the now customary outbound U.S. policy in international relations, the postwar instruments of the new global equilibrium. Under his leadership the United States got involved in the Korean War, fighting communism in the North, and found itself in the chill of the cold war in particular during the Soviet Blockade of Berlin. Before that he was a haberdasher: a person who sells zippers, buttons and ribbons and I think that sounds swell.

That's all for Truman. The next president I will _funfactify_ is, you have surely guessed, George Washington, the first president of all, mostly because he and you really get down at the end of _Dead Presidents_ and I want to study your nemesis. Apparently he is who Ajax stands for in your movie in connection with that particular way of stabbing you both men share in common... but nothing stops you, Deadpool, and I marvel at the way you have recovered from these wounds and I wonder about the little cut on my finger that epitomizes the lives of ordinary people. I think about how _wanting you_ is a substitute for wanting to be _like_ you.

I realized, while reading _Dead Presidents_ , that if the scene in your movie people call a reference to _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ actually is what they say it is, then so is the one in your comic book where you cut off all four limbs of George Washington, except you also take his head. It's a dark version of the classic one in the movie, where the black knight keeps his head and continues to believe that he is invincible. In your fight, the "black knight" George Washington looses his head and then begins to make amends. Finally his head is kicked into Lincoln's statue's lap like a soccer ball. I don't always agree with what they make you do in your books or with a lot of what goes on in them generally. I think you're being exploited and your heart is too good to realize it. I dare think that there are many a yellow bubble coming from you which we have never seen yet. Maybe that's why there is that reference to _The Truman Show_ at the beginning of _Dead Presidents_... maybe _you_ are the Truman, trapped inside a show, your actions at times planned by the design of others. Sometimes they don't even pay you, like at the end of this particular story where they decide that because of collateral damage you shouldn't get a dime, even after bringing the zombie crisis to a close and taking great personal risks to do so, not least of which is ending up with the spirit of dead agent Preston trapped inside your mind. By the way, concerning that, I disagree with that editorial decision, and I disagree with the way the magician says that there is "so much space" inside your head. There isn't any space inside your head. I know so. And I bet you don't even look like the way they draw you. Maybe they make you look worse than you really are. If that's what they do with your actions, it follows that that's probably what they do with your general demeanor. Still, I am mesmerized by the loveliness of your curves and the way you give a shape to your super suit. I like the way the tip of your mask hangs like that little pocket at the end of a condom. If they meant to demean you with that, it failed. It looks really hip.

I think you are going to come and kiss my finger in my sleep.

Love,

Abigail Tryst

P.S. I know where you live. Do you know where I live?


	7. 1969

Dear Deadpool,

I started reading the New Mutants but I only read a few pages so far. I have also been researching the background for _Dead Presidents_. There are many things called "Dead Presidents" in pop culture: first, there was the expression for US cash currency which originated in the fifties, then there was a website created by a man named Manus Hand in the early days of the internet featuring pictures of himself at the grave sites of all US Presidents and polling about it; then there was a movie released in 1995 featuring struggling African American veterans from the Vietnam war who decide to rob an armored vehicle for cash (a possible connection to the Truman reference) and finally there is currently a rebirth of the concept of literally touring the dead US Presidents, taken up by Brady Carlson in his first book published two weeks before the opening of your movie. I don't know what you say about it Deadpool, but all of this appears to me an intense net of connections surrounding the concept of dead Presidents and I believe that if I pursue it to its end, it will lead me straight to you, on your momma's porch where we are supposed to meet in 1969.

From memory, I suppose 1969 was a year of protests of all sorts, of populist anti-war, labor, civil rights and anti-consumerism movements. I don't know if it was the peak year of protest but it appears memorable to many. On second thought... I just googled Woodstock and I think I found my answer. Woodstock: a music festival held in Bethel NY August 17th to 19th 1969 that hosted 400 000 participants in what Wikipedia calls "the nexus of the counterculture generation." I never really liked the idea. I think perhaps it was too much about the drugs and debauchery, but I have no idea. I wasn't there. But since then I feel as though authorities have taken it upon themselves to cough up establishment versions of _Woodstock_ just to keep crowds in check. The corporations  & state partnership-produced version of the freedom that used to be is complete with glow sticks and a draw for a car.

The original Woodstock, says Wikipedia, was born of the union of the four musketeers: Roberts, Rosenman, Lang and Kornfeld. Roberts, coming from denture adhesive money, partnered with his Jewish friend from Princeton and Yale, son of a police officer, to create the festival that started out as a call for business venture ideas in the Wall Street Journal. These two formed the business end of things: Roberts was the money and Rosenman was the idea. I hope I got that right. I have yet to read a book on the topic. Lang, who went on to work with some of the top names in the music world and Artie Kornfeld, who has spent the last forty years giving educational talks on the true meaning of Woodstock, were the promoters. Lang was the one who eventually went mainstream and Kornfeld was the flower power guy who took the community route. The Woodstock head office was located at 47 West 57th street, Manhattan and the legend goes it was decorated according to the spirit of the times. The entire schedule of the event is available online and now I feel like I have to research all 32 bands featured at Woodstock (in addition to all 44 presidents). This thing is just never going to end. One last thing: Artie Kornfeld was kind of sexy but I wouldn't have dated him. Both of the promoters of Woodstock had loose, curly mops of hair. The businessmen are harder to find pictures of. If I have seen some they were not labelled for me to tell who is who. In any case, not to fear my love, it is you who has my heart, you the merc with a mouth.

In the end, the only connection so far between you and the year 1969 is the fact that you- your spirit, and mine - make a cameo appearance in Bryan Adam's Summer of '69 but that information is extraneous to your canon. Only a referent of The Truman show also refers back to your canon. So the whole 1969 connection is extraneous for now, I don't know if I really have a legitimate reason for my belief that we should meet on your momma's porch in 1969 yet, I just feel it. It possesses and haunts me. I need an obsession and here's it. I need a destination to supply for my lack of destiny and so far, Woodstock seems to be the answer to the Question I asked in chapter 4: "What the f#$% happened in 1969?" Perhaps I should look into Artie Kornfeld's ideas about the true meaning of Woodstock. That might give me a lead to find your mother's porch... There we will share, you and I with all the stars of heaven, our first kiss. Sparks will fly, the space-time continuum will explode open, hearts will meld and the true spirit of Woodstock will live again forever, whatever that means...

Love, forever, in transcendental ways,

Abigail Tryst


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